Field of the Invention
Our invention relates to paper products such as absorbent sheets. Our invention also relates to methods of making paper products such as absorbent sheets, as well as to structuring fabrics for making paper products such as absorbent sheets.
Related Art
The use of fabrics is well known in the papermaking industry for imparting structure to paper products. More specifically, it is well known that a shape can be provided to paper products by pressing a malleable web of cellulosic fibers against a fabric and then subsequently drying the web. The resulting paper products are thereby formed with a molded shape corresponding to the surface of the fabric. The resulting paper products also thereby have characteristics resulting from the molded shape, such as a particular caliper and absorbency. As such, a myriad of structuring fabrics has been developed for use in papermaking processes to provide products with different shapes and characteristics. And, fabrics can be woven into a near limitless number of patterns for potential use in papermaking processes.
One important characteristic of many absorbent paper products is softness—consumers want, for example, soft paper towels. Many techniques for increasing the softness of paper products, however, have the effect of reducing other desirable properties of the paper products. For example, calendering basesheets as part of a process for producing paper towels can increase the softness of the resulting paper towels, but calendering also has the effect of reducing the caliper and absorbency of the paper towels. On the other hand, many techniques for improving other important properties of paper products have the effect of reducing the softness of the paper products. For example, using wet and dry strength resins in a papermaking process can improve the underlying strength of paper products, but wet and dry strength resins also reduce the perceived softness of the products.
For these reasons, it is desirable to make softer paper products, such as absorbent sheets. And, it is desirable to be able to make such softer absorbent sheets through manipulation of a structuring fabric used in the process of making the absorbent sheets.